NO! That Is Not A Typo
It is, in fact, an hilarious pun HILARIOUS I TELL YOU. Obviously - of course! - Conrad is skitting the word 'Oligarch'.
Here an aside. Yes, already! The word itself is derived from Latin via Greek <hack spit hack spit>, that is, from 'Oligarkhia', meaning 'Rule of the few'. 'Oligo' meaning 'Few' and 'Archy' being either 'Rule' or 'Government'. Art!
Because, let's face it, oligarchs are boring, so have a super tank instead
Once again we are going to be looking at the Ruffian economy and their energy exports & revenue, as explained by that stalwart Youtube vlogger Joe Blogs. I went so far as to make notes, so rest assured you're going to get a faceful of fearful facts. Yes indeed Apollo Creed. Art!
Supertanker
Let me remind you that on 05/12/2022 and 05/02/2023 bans and price caps came into force on oil and gas exports from Ruffia to the EU in terms of the bans and globally in terms of the price cap.
To keep on top of things, since the price for oil can be quite dynamic, the price cap is reviewed every two months. For crude oil exports, the cap is set at 5% below market price, to ensure the Ruffians get no profits from their exports <cue cackle and moustache-tweaking>. Refined oil products are trickier to assess as there are so many of them: diesel, fuel oil, petrol, aviation fuel, asphalt, paraffin, liquified petroleum gas. Art!
Thus there are two price caps. For discounted refined products the cap is set at $45 per barrel, and for premium products the cap is $100 per barrel. Art!
This is in Euros, thus these figures would be 6% higher in dollar values.
The first dotted line is when the Kremlin Gremlin began his Special Idiotic Operation, when Ruffian energy exports were at €750 million per day. The next dotted line is when the first set of oil sanctions were imposed, by which point export revenues had shrunk to just over €200 million per day; after 05/12/2022 they shrank further, to about €150 million per day. The second dotted line is the second set of sanctions imposed from 05/02/2023, and you can see export revenue is down to €50 million. So, down to one-fifteenth from peak, or 6.66%, which does rather seem like the Number Of The Beast for the Ruffian economy.
Going back to the more familiar dollar values, this loss of revenue amounts to <drum roll> $500 million per day. For 2023 as a whole, this would total $180 billion in lost revenue. Or, pre-war, 8% of the Ruffian GDP. By now, with a straitened economy, that probably translates as 16%*. Art!
But wait - it gets worse! Over 30 Ruffian refineries face closure thanks to the dramatic fall in demand for refined oil products. With far less refineries operating there is going to be a glut of crude oil, which again cannot be exported at a profit.
We're not done with the schadenfreude, mind. Since Putin's Ruffia is a gangster oligarchy, this drastic shrinkage in revenues means there is far less loot going around than there was before February 2022. Essentially, the pie is shrinking and thus 39 oligarchs have fallen out of windows after having a pot of polonium tea and shooting themselves in the head 27 times. You know I loathe Shakespeare with a burning passion, but he did come up with a quote that's very, very apt: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown".
"Only I can prevent this table taking off!"
Well, That Escalated Unexpectedly
Here's a cautionary tale from Youtube. Original Poster had a cousin who wanted photographs taking of her whilst in her prime; reading between the lines Your Humble Scribe suspects they may have featured her unclad, because she had a contract with the chosen photographer that EXPLICITLY stated the photos were NOT NOT NOT to be shared with anyone else. Which is fair enough. Art!
No, you don't get a nude female, you slobbering perverts
6 months after the shoot the photographer gets back in touch with the cousin and says he has retained copies of her photos; not only that, there's a website that will pay him $500 for them (another reason for the unclad scenario), and if she doesn't want them published, she has to pay him $500.
Cousin consults OP, who tells her to tell Blackmailing Bottomhole that she will blast him on social media if he does publish the photos.
OP comes across the photos on Reddit 6 months later. This shows BB has made a poor life choice, because OP posts utterly damning reviews on his website. They also quoted DMCA to all sites hosting the photographs and got them taken down.
6 months later the BB comes back to the cousin, saying he wants $10,000 in compensation for his business suffering badly from the negative reviews, and only then will he delete the photographs.
Another poor life choice! Cousin hires an attorney and goes to town on BB. Art!
It takes a year, during which BB sold everything he had to try and stay out of jail, unsuccessfully, because he's now doing 3 years in prison for blackmail. When he gets out, his income will be garnished to pay cousin back. Heh!
Some cheats prosper. Not this one.
"Who Fears The Devil" By Manly Wade Wellman
I've mentioned this book a few times already, available for free on teh Interwebz. It's composed of lots of short stories and in the book I had many decades ago, there were little vignettes between some of the stories. So, to tease you (and up the word count), here's one of these typically pithy notes.
You Know the Tale of Hoph
The noon sun was hot on the thickets but in his cabin was only blue dim light. His black brows made one streak above iron-colored eyes' "Yes, ma'am?" he said.
"I'm writing a book of stories," she said, and she was rose-faced and butter-haired. "I hear you know the tale of Hoph. How sailors threw him off a ship in a terrible storm a hundred years ago, but the sea swept him ashore and then he walked and walked until he reached these mountains. How he troubled the mountain people with spells and curses and sendings of nightmares."
His long white teeth smiled in his long white face. "But you know that story already."
"No, not all of it. What was Hoph's motivation in tormenting the people?"
"His food was the blood of pretty women," was what he replied her. "Each year he made them give him a pretty woman. When she died at the year's end, with the last drop of her blood gone, he made them give him another."
"Until he died too," she tried to finish.
"He didn't die. They didn't know that he had to be shot with a silver bullet."
Up came his hands into her sight, shaggy-haired, long-clawed.
She screamed once.
From the dark corner where I hid I shot Hoph with a silver bullet.
Short but resonant, hmmm? Art!
Quite possibly Hoph
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor has just seen His Excellency Lord Sur being Eviscerated by another bio-vore aristocrat, thanks to failing at policing his littoral territory.
Faced with an alien similar in comportment and appearance to Sur, the Doctor didn't mince words.
"Your time is coming to an end! You and your artificially-created slave culture, with it's legacy of waste and blame-avoidance."
Lord Excellency Url sneered in best bio-vore style, which merely seemed like a sneeze to the Doctor.
"Threaten away, alien. We only need to keep you alive long enough to explain the secrets of your puzzle-box."
"Ha!" sneered the Doctor, a grimace that seemed like a palsied hiccup to Url. "Ha!" Witty or wise response failed him, and he repeated the sneer whilst thinking. "Ha!"
Url made a gesture, indicating that the small alien needed to be removed to a place of confinement. Inspired by this sentence, the Doctor suddenly joined a mass of inter-connected dots.
"And - and I know why you and Sur wanted Sorbusa executed as a heretic. Sorbusa and his comrades. Nothing to do with heresy!"
Url snorted with amused contempt, as he picked up his own woven cloak.
"It's because they knew you from five thousand years ago, isn't it?"
Lord Excellency Url's talons scrabbled nervously on the cape, sliding uselessly along the woven strands of glass.
A few words short of the usual total, but a good cliff-hanger to halt at.
Finally -
"Empire" has arrived and it's time for lunch, not to mention a bit of a scrape, as I look repellently piratical. Chin chin!
* Given that the Ruffian economy is now equal to that of Chile, i.e. down by 80%, the real percentage could be 40%.
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